Live Google Earth feed on Sydney Hobart

THIS IS AWESOME!!!!!

What John Said.....

That is neet. Thank you Thomas! Click on "Yacth Tracker" at the top of the page, then when you put your mouse arrow on the boats, it will give you the yacth name, speed and direction, distance to go, placing, etc. Very nice!

way cool!

Maybe this can be done for the Tybee?

This is really cool. I am pretty surprised at how spread out the leaders are. Konica Minolta is 32 miles off of the Rhumb Line, Wild Oats is right on it, and the others are pretty much spread out between them. I would have thought that with all of the "rock stars" and all of the equipment & data they have available they would be more closely bunched together. I know everyone's looking for an edge but I thought the data available to them would keep them closer together.
This would be awesome for the Tybee and many of the other distance races, such as the Macho Man, Round The Island, etc... I think more people would follow those races that can't make but maybe it would peak their interests to maybe make it next year.

Forcasting is not an exact science as we all know, but also, I expect that the boats have slightly different performance profiles as well - some will go better 1 degree more off the wind than others (and be able to fly their kites/code 1's etc) slightly earlier etc.

I'm assuming that the differance is partly what the tactitions think the wind will do and so will dictate what sails thay can fly (and so the VMG thay can make). It will also be factored my how close the oppo is. Are the boats that they should be in front of them already behind (i.e. no-one is playing catch up). Do they have boats to windward of them in a "passing lane", do they need to sail slightly higher to improve VMG over the rhumb line. Do they have a boat ahead that they should be ahead off (and so need to create a passing lane).

Didn't Konica Minolta try the same strategy last year? Only then they took such a beating going to windward further offshore that the boat cracked transversally across the deck...I saw it when they got to Hobart, they had screwed wooden boards on to reinforce it...pretty impressive...Last year staying closer to shore was a winning bet because the boats were more sheltered...Shouldn't matter with this years ideal conditions though...Let's see how this works out!

Its pretty cool, but IMHO doesnt come close to the Virtual Spectator software from the Volvo Ocean Race (cloud, isobars, and wind overlays). I also like the french software, where you can see track history combined with wind prognosis.

Saw this picture over at SA, at least they'l win best dressed 😉

BTW, anyone know why Nicorette isnt competing? (Last years winner). I know they lost their rig last year a month or so after the race but they should have fixed that by now.

I should have some pictures from docks after the finish.

Tony the Nicorette was re-built and this year it is sailing under AAPT name. Double click her, she is in the fourth position.

AAPT

Sean Langman has chartered this powerful 90-footer with a canting keel for the 2005 Rolex Sydney Hobart from Ludde Ingvall who skippered the boat through galeforce conditions to take line honours in last year’s 60th Rolex Sydney Hobart. The boat, then called Nicorette, also finished a close 2nd for IRC overall placings. Not long afterwards, on a social sail off the Gold Coast, the boat broke its mast putting her out of racing until now, with a new rig being built for this race.

Coogans Stores
This Open 66 was until recently called AAPT which owner Sean Langman has raced so successfully over the past nine years. For the 2005 Rolex Sydney Hobart, Langman has chartered this boat to Phil Turner and it will race as Coogans Stores. The boat has regularly snapped at the transoms of the maxis, and the former Nicorette in the 2004 race. This boat will be crewed by a mixed Tasmanian and Sydney crew.

Robi, if you can find reliable GPS relaying-transmitters that are small enough and can take the beating of that race, then I agree, it would be fun.

What happened to the transponder on Nokia? Seems they are not putting out data. Some in the fleet are doing 21kts. pretty good for a lead mine!

This is the company that made the system for the round texel race (Sport-Track.com)
See also: Linkinmedia

I believe they had a test unit on Tommy Bahama at the last Worrell. Small GPS unit stuffed under the inspection port. I think they had some reception issues during the race due to the distance offshore.

The bigger units (and batteries) on these boats would really affect the weight on beachcats. I think the small units had potential, even if they would only record positions to download after the leg for use in a "wrap up" broadcast that showed where everyone went that day.

I see now that there are camcorders that record on to hard disk and can store up to 8 hours of video. I think that would be an ideal way to record some onboard footage, since you could hook up a bullet cam and let it run for the day. Now to find a lightweight battery that can record that long...

Wild Oates XI took line honors with a record time of 1:18:40:10, breaking the previous record of 1:19:48:02.
They finished the race under jib only after breaking a batten.

We did indeed - we tried two types. One that was a GPS receiver with a cellular transmitter that didn't work very well. The cellular signal was pulsed on fixed intervals - if you were in a wave trough when it pulsed, you didn't get a position. Turns out there were a lot of troughs out here.

The second unit was installed halfway up the coast. It was a GPS transceiver and it worked great, even well off shore where they were NEVER SUPPOSED to sail () but did anyway. It used a patch antenna and had a smaller battery than the first unit (about the size of six or eight D cells). It was rugged and reliable, but relatively expensive for the two weeks. Prices have dropped precipitously since then, both for tracking service and for the hardware. I was surprised it never caught on.

The units aboard the Sydney-Hobart boats are a whole different ball game. More telemetry. And the web interface using Google must have cost a fortune with pop-up photos, descriptions and real-time data for EVERY boat, even last place (I checked). This whole deal is a geek's wet dream.

I doubt it.

Once you have the data stream, it's just a real time feed updated every x seconds. All the pop up data and piccies was probably about 5 minutes work. Click on icon gives "yacht number", do a database read for the pictures, boat data, crew data etc. Very simple.

JW

Since you found one that works, is Chuck going to incorporate those in this next T-500? Or was it too expensive for them to sponsor it?

I don't think the GPS tracking was ever looked at from the race management perspective, just by individual teams. With all the other logistics involved, I think Chuck already has his hands as full as he wants them. Rick looked into the type of systems used by truck fleet managers for all the competitors once, but it looked bulky.

@scooby - The cost is in the set up. I would imagine the price tag for setting up this component to the web site cost more than the entire web site last year. Sure, it's quick to get the pic, blurb about boat and crew, etc., but you have to do it for ALL of the competitors AFTER you have developed a format to slip everything into, and it is interactive and tied to the moving, constantly updated position of the boat. Plus, you can't give it to a flunkie - whoever wrote the stuff is intimately familiar or did an awful lot of research.

Anyway - I'm impressed. Well executed - I didn't see it hiccup or fail once throughout. I knew of the first retirement from Google before it hit the news!

Sorry, disagee. All it requires is a real time data feed and then the trapping of this data. I would be very surprised if Google Earth do not already have standard interface(s) that you can tap into (for a fee no doubt) that will provide the lat/long in real time based on an imput via a GPS provider/monitor.

The only problem may be formatting the data that is being sent to the "Sydney Hobart race control" people into the form that Google Earth will accept, which I cannot see as being difficult.

Just a bit like a real time feed into a web site.

I think that you are underestimating the problem, writing some software for google earth is maybe a few days work.
The real problem is gathering the actual data and putting it into to the software.

The cheapest would be to place a cheap garmin GPS onboard from which you daily upload the track data to google earth. They use a lithium battery which lasts long enough and are very light. Sure its not realtime but I dont think that would matter to much.

Realtime tracking is much more challenging to do on beachcats than on yachts. To do it properly you would have to use something like satellite Argos beacons (which is probably what they use with sydney-hobart) which require big batteries and are very heavy.

If you are feeling creative you could probably rig a GSM/GPRS phone up to a gps-on-a-chip and stream the nmea data from there for cheap.

But the original query was:

So my point stands. The web interface is easy as most of the work is already done. The boats (I assume, as you do) already have to carry the Argos Beacon, so it as you say is a couple of days work - If that.